WooCommerce Black Friday Checklist: How to Prepare WooCommerce Store for BFCM 2024?

This blog explores a tried-and-tested checklist for WooCommerce store owners to prepare for the 2024 Black Friday Cyber Monday Shopping Season. We’ll also list some essential WooCommerce plugins to maximize BFCM sales.

There’s no way to be fully prepared for the biggest shopping season of the year—unless you have a foolproof checklist to guide you through it. Statistics show steady traffic growth during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and into the holiday season. So, enough with the build-up— let’s jump into the best practices for the upcoming WooCommerce Black Friday sale.

The holiday season is fast approaching, and it’s time to start preparing your WooCommerce store for BFCM 2024. Let’s take a closer look at how to maximize WooCommerce sales on Black Friday!

#1 Prepare WooCommerce BFCM Marketing Strategy for Multiple Channels

Customers don’t rely on a single channel; they explore all options to find the best deals. Ensure your products are listed, optimized, and available on the relevant channels to your audience.

Focus on channels where you anticipate the highest sales. Multi-channel marketing includes social media platforms, Google Shopping, Google Ads, Meta, and more. Identify where your target market spends the most time, and get ready to start selling.

For effective multi-channel integration, you need to generate a product feed file optimized for the specific sales channel. The WebToffee WooCommerce Product Feed plugin can help you with that. It lets you create optimized product feeds with essential data like brand, GTIN, type, etc. These feeds help integrate your store with Google Shopping, Facebook Shops, TikTok Shops, and other popular platforms.

#2 Set Up Post-BFCM Follow-up Plans

While follow-up emails usually come after the main BFCM event, preparing them in advance is essential. Here’s why: many customers see a deal, make a purchase, and leave—often without the intention of returning. To encourage repeat purchases, stay in touch with them by gently piquing their interest with follow-up emails and notifications. Keep these communications consistent but non-intrusive.

A more effective approach is to segment new customers based on their order history and other gathered insights, such as browsing behavior and dwell time. Use these insights to tailor your email marketing strategy for higher engagement and repeat sales.

#3 Start Reaching Out to Your Loyal Customers

For your pre- sale BFCM email marketing strategy, let your customers know about your exclusive 2024 holiday shopping deals. Begin by building excitement for your BFCM offers with your loyal customers, followers, and subscribers. This way, they’ll be looking forward to your promotions.

#4 Create Eye-Catching Visuals and Optimized Buttons

Millennials and Gen Z are the primary potential customers for eCommerce stores. They’re more likely to purchase products online when they seem attractive and grab their attention. This may differ for SaaS platforms, but the bottom line remains—grab their attention!

Standing out in an ultra-creative world can be challenging. But joining the crowd, engaging with the community, and aligning with current trends isn’t as hard as it sounds. With the right BFCM strategies to guide you through the chaos, you’ll reach an incredible milestone: capturing their attention and driving sales. Congratulations!

Similarly, having an optimized CTA button and conducting A/B split tests are crucial. Without it, potential customers may feel let down, losing the chance to close that sale.

#5 Set Up Cart Abandonment Email

Cart abandonment is a real challenge for eCommerce stores, especially during seasonal sales. Whether it’s due to a complex checkout, a stock shortage, or even a website crash from heavy traffic (we’ll cover these in detail later), it’s essential to have a strategy in place. Think of abandoned cart emails as your go-to tool, ready to roll out when a cart is left behind.

With modern automation tools like AutomateWoo, there’s no need to manually send each email. Set up multi-step campaigns for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or any occasion, track conversions, and send unlimited emails.

#6 Plan Your Campaign Strategy

Dividing your marketing strategy into phases, like in this BFCM checklist, can make the process feel more manageable. Start with pre-BFCM campaigns, offering early-bird discounts, VIP offers, and teasers for exclusive holiday deals. This builds anticipation among your audience.

Next, plan your ad marketing strategy for BFCM itself. Prepare for the shopping frenzy by focusing on promotions that capture the excitement of holiday deals.

Finally, focus on the follow-up ad strategy. Are there retargeting ads for visitors who didn’t convert? Will the campaign be extended through the week? Mapping out your campaign ensures no potential customers are left behind.

#7 Ensure Your Return Policy is Updated

Returns are inevitable when it comes to eCommerce holiday shopping. People will be looking to make easy returns, so make sure to keep your returns and refund policy up to date.

Here are some key questions to answer when updating your policy:

• What items can and cannot be returned?
• Is an exchange possible?
• When is the return deadline?
• How to initiate the return process?
• What conditions must be met for a return to be accepted?
• What is your refund policy?
• How should customers contact you?

These are just a few points to consider. Review your return policy thoroughly to prevent negative feedback or chargebacks.

Also, you will want to include a link to your return policy in the order confirmation email and ensure it is easily accessible on your website or individual product pages.

#8 Offer Other Shipping Options

Shopping is an exciting experience, especially when anticipating a product’s arrival. However, this excitement can wane during the holiday season when shipping times often increase due to the rush. Many customers prefer faster shipping over free shipping during this time.

Offering faster shipping options gives you a competitive edge and helps you close more Black Friday and Cyber Monday WooCommerce sales.

Plus, faster shipping can reduce cart abandonment. Ensure proper tracking is integrated so customers receive timely updates on their shipments. Alerting them to delays or changes can reduce disappointment and prevent negative feedback.

#9 Simplify Your Checkout Process for BFCM

Is your store checkout process simple? If not, simplify it by reducing visual clutter and guiding customers to complete their purchases. Provide various payment options, such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), debit cards/credit cards, UPI, and others.

Offering BNPL and EMI options can also help increase bulk purchases. By saving customer payment details, you can speed up future transactions.

#10 Proactive Customer Support

Black Friday and Cyber Monday bring an influx of customers and their inquiries. To manage this surge, it’s essential to have proactive customer support in place.

Customers often have questions while shopping. A chatbot can quickly address these queries, helping them proceed with their purchases. On the other hand, directing customers to the help section, asking them to fill out a ticket, and waiting for assistance can frustrate them, causing them to abandon their purchase.

A detailed FAQ page that addresses order-related queries and technical issues, along with an accessible support system, is a good start. You should consider offering live chat support, utilizing chatbots, or implementing call routing systems to guide customers promptly. Investing in customer service software will help manage and track queries, especially during the busy WooCommerce holiday traffic for BFCM.

#11 Optimize Your Website

A critical aspect of your 2024 BFCM checklist is ensuring fast site speed. In fact, 90% of customers will leave a website if it loads too slowly. According to Google, the ideal page speed is under three seconds. While site speed is always essential, it’s even more important during high-traffic events like BFCM.

With more shoppers using mobile devices, you need to make sure your site is well-optimized for mobile shopping.

#12 Set Up Conversion Tracking

Tracking customer behavior helps assess the effectiveness of your marketing strategies during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the holiday shopping season. This will help you understand what worked and identify areas for improvement in your future BFCM campaigns.

#13 Make Sure Your Website is Secure

Your website must remain secure at all times. Implement security plugins, HTTPS encryption, and regular data backups to help protect your store from potential threats. These measures secure your data and build trust.

Adding a secure payment gateway, such as the PayPal Express Checkout plugin, enhances payment security for your WooCommerce store by providing encryption and multi-factor authentication. Plus, it offers an express checkout option, making payments and checkout easier for customers.

#14 Manage Your Inventory Levels for WooCommerce Black Friday

When preparing your WooCommerce store for the 2024 holiday sales, another critical task is managing your inventory levels for the big sale, especially through Cyber Week. But how do you ensure smooth inventory control? Here are some tips to maintain your stock levels:

• Forecast product demand in advance: Understand which products sell the most during this period. Analyze historical data, social media trends, and market insights to help predict and forecast demand.
• Add safety stock: Ensure you have buffer stock for high-demand products to prevent stockouts. Base this decision on data to avoid overstocking and keep the product lifecycle in mind.
• Real-time inventory tracking: When showcasing and selling products across multiple channels, it’s vital to track inventory. This helps prevent overselling and avoids disappointing customers.
• Perform a last-minute inventory check: Before the sale begins, conduct a final stock check for all products.

Also, during the BFCM campaign continuously monitor inventory levels to identify any stockouts or overselling. If sales exceed your predictions, quickly replenish stock to capitalize on the increased demand. This also helps allocate stock across sales channels.

#15 Post-Purchase Strategy

Your post-purchase strategy is another key focus area. The post-purchase experience helps shape the customer journey, starting right after the purchase and lasting until the product reaches the customer.

A great post-purchase experience includes timely order confirmations, personalized thank-you emails, tailored product recommendations, and exclusive discounts.

Providing a great post-purchase experience will encourage customers to return even after the promotion ends.

#16 BFCM Marketing and Promotion

You may be wondering about marketing and promotion strategies. We intentionally left those out here to avoid confusion, but don’t worry— we have a detailed article on eCommerce strategies that can help boost your sales this holiday season. Let’s quickly go through a short checklist of marketing tasks to complete before your BFCM campaign begins.

Identify Featured Products and Pricing Strategy

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about offering exclusive discounts and deals. Choose BFCM offers that are both budget-friendly for you and attractive to customers.

Although you may have many products in your store, showcasing everything may not be the best strategy. Offering discounts on all your products could hurt your bottom line. Instead, focus on your core products and drive more traffic through those.

Offer discounts on these selected items, and once customers arrive on your site, encourage additional purchases with enticing deals like product bundles, free shipping, discounts for minimum spend, or gift cards. Having a dedicated landing page for your Black Friday sale will help manage traffic and track performance.

Creating FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) a.k.a Sense of Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency is one of the most effective tactics for your BFCM campaign. Use limited-time offers, countdown timers, low-stock alerts, and early-bird discounts to drive immediate action.

Highlight your BFCM Campaign

Start hyping up your deals early via email and social media. Build anticipation by sending personalized emails, and feature your Black Friday deals across your eCommerce store. Ensure that customers can easily find these deals, whether they land on your site organically or through ads. Offering early-bird discounts and VIP offers is a great way to drive engagement.

You can add site-wide sticky banners, popups with CTAs, countdown banners with coupon codes, or even a dedicated Black Friday deals menu. Make sure all your CTAs are optimized and trackable.

Here’s what you need to consider after your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns end.

#17 Get Feedback from Customers

Reach out to your customers, thank them for their trust, and ask for feedback and suggestions. This not only helps them feel valued and encourages repeat business, but also provides insights to improve your next Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

#18 Planning Inventory Clearance

With bulk inventory kept to avoid stock-outs, excess inventory must be handled to make room for fresh stock. Start by identifying unsold stock and developing a strategy to liquidate them. Offering discounts, clearance sales, and product bundle deals effectively clears excess stock.

#19 Send Follow-up Emails

Don’t let the momentum fade. Capitalize on it by sending follow-up emails with exclusive deals and sneak peeks of upcoming clearance sales and discounts. Use retargeting ads to re-engage shoppers and bring them back to your website.

#20 Boost Customer Retention with WooCommerce BFCM Sales

Reward customers who made significant purchases during the sale. Offering gift cards can not only encourage additional purchases but also increase average order value as customers often spend more than the value of the gift card.

#21 Analyze your Campaign Results

Finally, evaluate your BFCM campaign. Review metrics like average order value, customer acquisition costs, and conversion rates. Document key takeaways to improve your marketing strategy for the following Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping season.

That’s it, guys!

This was a quick rundown of our BFCM checklist. I’ve focused only on the most relevant strategies. As mentioned earlier, the preparation phase is crucial. Once you’ve covered these steps, managing the BFCM and post-BFCM phases will feel much less overwhelming.

It may seem like a lot of effort for a few days of sales, but this checklist is more than just for the 2024 BFCM season. After implementing these strategies, you’ll see your sales soar. Plus, you can apply this checklist to other campaigns as well.

We hope you found what you were looking for and wish you the best with the holiday rush.

On a separate note, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. Is there anything you’d like to add? Let us know!